Projekt

The project will conduct an analysis of how processes of wealth accumulation use, transform and co-produce land, natural resources, infrastructure, urban-rural relations and other spatial entanglements. By producing insights from and into Latin America, it will develop theoretical and empirical understandings of how the (re-)production of wealth and space is mutually co-constitutive. Particularly, it draws on the rich Latin American traditions of spatial theorisation on wealth (re-)production, from classical dependency theory to (neo-)extractivism, green grabbing, and the racialisation and feminisation of economic exploitation. In detail, the project will: (1) study the economic logics and underlying spatial processes that create the conditions of wealth accumulation through (different forms of) Latin American extractivism; (2) investigate the agency and contestations of key actors in the production of space and wealth; and (3) provide transparency on wealth (re)production in Latin America through creating a Latin American Observatory for Geographies of Wealth and Space in close collaboration with non-academic partners, providing the basis for identifying strategies for egalitarian and sustainable transformations in Latin America. Methodologically, the project combines qualitative and quantitative data from methods such as corporate statistics analysis, social network analysis, and in-depth interviews with different stakeholder groups. The project explores three theoretically founded case studies on (i) the agribusiness frontier and the land-agrarian-urban nexus in Brazil; (ii) the mining-urbanisation nexus in Chile, and (iii) the infrastructure-finance nexus in Mexico, thus covering the countries with the highest concentrations of wealth across Latin America.

• Prof. Dr. Michael Janoschka

  Karlsruher Institut für Technologie
  (KIT)
  KIT-Fakultät für Bauingenieur-,
  Geo- und Umweltwissenschaften
  Institut für Regionalwissenschaft
  Karlsruhe
  

• Prof. Dr. Nadine Reis

  El Colegio de México
  Centro de Estudios Demográficos, Urbanos y
  Ambientales (CEDUA)
  Tlalpan, Ciudad de México
  Mexiko
  

• Dr. Sérgio Sauer, Ph.D.

  Universidade de Brasília
  Faculdade UnB Planaltina
  Centro de Desenvolvimento Sustentável
  Brasilia
  Brasilien
  

• Dr. Corinna Hölzl-Verwiebe

  Humboldt-Universität Berlin
  Geographisches Institut
  Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät
  Arbeitsgebiet Angewandte Geographie und Raumplanun
  Berlin
  

• Dr. Michael Lukas

  Universidad de Chile
  Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo
  Departamento de Geografia
  Santiago
  Chile